water, be my memory

i have known for a long time that, in writing and otherwise, i was not speaking from myself but instead transmitting something from the world, the revelations coming down, never a singularity of voice but a chorus, the alchemy of this clear that night i was taking a bath, years and years ago, when suddenly i remembered drowning in the ocean as a girl, long before i had ever seen the ocean, but the water in my lungs was truer than the fact that i was sitting upright in my bath at home, visibly not drowning, but getting out anyways, with a certainty of having drowned and been rescued by hands that felt bigger than my body, the relief of the irritating grains of sand under the skin of my arms, the sun’s glare brighter than my mother’s, who was not my mother, which i understood as i was watching this memory that was not entirely mine take up space in my body

and so much of this requires a kind of listening of the body, a deep silence within my core that might break on one such night, or mid-morning, or long afternoon— which cannot be hurried, only ushered in with ease, with the kind of delicious breath that makes you aware of how good air feels in your lungs, which most professions on earth don’t allow, but which aliveness demands

and it is under the weight of such demands that i have untethered myself from so many things that have kept me in place, in a kind of back and forth that has a predictable rhythm, a capped high and low and steady paychecks and often simply the expectation to breathe and eat and sleep and dream on someone else’s time, which is not bad in itself except when it’s terrible, except when my body insists that instead of vomiting applications it wants to eat poetry, that instead of working through the to-do list we are lying down for a mid-morning nap, where we will dream disturbing dreams (the dreams have been so frequent and so disturbing, as of late) and will wake to noon’s light, desiccated but content, and knowing we cannot only eat our words because there are sugar snap peas and lemon preserves to be had,

and meaning and money waiting to be made and days frothing forth from us, Rilke said the future is still but we are in constant motion, so bless this perpetual motion, bless the stillness of this day, the silence churning within my body, the covenant of dreams, the being for something else, something greater than oneself, the singularity revealing itself a hydra, a tune of so many other voices in key, and this work of singing, singing, singing, with my grandmother’s voice, my father’s and brother’s and the girl who i do not know but whose desire to kick and live i felt wash over me that day, who i am still carrying out of the water, and who is still carrying me out

loving the bone mother

my insecurities begin with the dock and end at the altar. i don’t know if i’m talking about ritual death or a commitment, i suppose both are endings and beginnings of a kind. what i mean is, i’m afraid of where i end and where i begin. i’m afraid of beginning and afraid of ending. except in some half-sleep, always, i manage to live through both. what is cardinal in me is always flying forth into a new scheme, project, or marriage. what is mutable in me shifts direction the moment our vulnerabilities are revealed. how soft we are, but also how angular, also, how rigid and controlling our movements, how devastatingly pitiful our attachments, how naïve our wishes, how idealistic our narrations of life, how afraid of being alone we truly are, how afraid of being seen as we are, the mirror dark of eye and downturned mouth, trembling and pale and hideous in our isolation, a spider dressed in the colors of a dart frog, how lurid our schemes of entrapment, how obtuse our desires to do things differently. we build idols of ourselves and break when others see through them. there is something cardinal and something mutable but nothing fixed, nothing holding down to steady the ground in the work of being loved. except love herself, holding steady in the garden. except love, holding down our community, our bonds to others, our place in the collective. and the bone mother, with her severity and her demands, inhabiting the same place. both, i think, saying, you have the ability to be serious in love. not serious as in punitive, stubborn, or forceful (although those lessons will come with the territory too), but serious as in committed to failing and trying again, serious as in i don’t know what will save the world but i think this might save us, or give us a fighting chance at a life worth living. and i suppose there is no way to be loved without being seen, flaws and all, terror and all, anger and all, irrationality and fervor and failure and darkness and shadow and syrup and tension and all. to love is to play the fool. not to walk towards what we have always done, but to chart new and unknown paths to the people we choose to walk this life with. to say i am frightened and also, i am committed to trying. to say i fear a loveless life more than i fear the possibilities of heartbreak, to say feeling is more rewarding than numbness, to say there is no sweeter labor than that of cultivating a community. and then to say also, love, you do not have to prove your lovability through overextension, through apologies, or commitments that you cannot sustain. to say cultivating love also means saving some of the harvest for yourself, to not pour out from empty cups, to move slowly through discomfort, holding her hand, because in this area of life, you are capable of that. to be at the beginning and the ending of things is always beautiful, and also, the middle is actually always a necessity. whether we choose to see the middle for what it is, without feeling choked, trapped, incapable, or overwhelmed, or even more, without running away from those feelings when they arise, is the fateful choice. i trust us to make it, every damn time.

angel bista is a queer, Lhotsampa refugee, writing from the ancestral lands of the Ottawa & Potawatomi peoples. you can find her at angelbista.substack.com